


Exactly the Type

by palimpsestus



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: High Chaos, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 00:00:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8599054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: They all know Corvo Attano, the respected, regal Lord Protector from Serkonos. They know he is kind, they know he is faithful. They believe they know what he might do. 
___Endgame spoilers! Companion piece to 'Against Type' but stands alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Against Type](https://archiveofourown.org/works/622937) by [palimpsestus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus). 



Will there ever be a part of him that feels mercy again? Will there ever be softness in him again?

The woman’s body slipped off his sword, the weight falling from his arm like a sigh. A gull swept down to skim the surf off the Wale with a shriek, like it was wailing for the loss of a dear friend.

Corvo Attano let his head fall back, raising his face to the stars, and he could not breathe for the pain that bound his chest, strangling his heart, his only heart, the only heart that lived. The pain bubbled into rage, overflowing like a tide attacking the harbour, and he wanted to kill the bird too, that it thought its loss was anywhere near comparable to his.

The heart in his pocket, the thump against his leg, was beating faster. It skipped like a lover’s as his hand brushed its leathery sides, it wanted him to squeeze and tease the arcane knowledge from it. He snatched his fingers away, stumbling backwards from the body, from the blood that seeped towards his boots across the well-oiled deck.

The pain returned, the rocks beneath the waves that would always be shown when the tide receded. To have lost Jessamine and Emily once was more pain than he could have endured. To have lost them both twice . . . he might as well fling himself into the void.

The old man’s uneven tread on the deck preceded a sharp intake of breath, and then Anton whispered, “Oh, Corvo.”

“Did you know?” His voice cracked as he asked, perhaps he was barely understandable. He knew the old man was lingering at the bulkhead, he could hear the whispers of the man’s fear, and the possibility of further chaos clutched at the heart so close to his fingertips.

“Billie was many things over the years,” Anton murmured, approaching with the slow, aching gait of the old. “Perhaps now she’s at peace. I wish that you were.”

Peace? Peace was lying in a skiff, cradling Jessamine in the dawn light, and peace was so long forgotten.

Once he had thought peace might be standing unseen on a rooftop, watching his nimble daughter dance over the rain slicked slates with Wyman, hearing her laughter above Dunwall’s streets. That was a little bit like peace, and that had been enough to fool him for a while.

If he had only been a little faster, a little less old, a little less fooled by peace, he might have been the target of Delilah’s marble. Emily might have escaped the tower in his place, and bound for Morley. She and Wyman might have spent a life on rooftops, dining on stolen food, ruling over their own little kingdom, and kept far from Delilah’s reach. Emily may have been happier there, free and at peace.

Or would she have found herself staring back up at Dunwall tower. Would the Outsider have favoured her, and would she too have known the bitter loss of Jessamine all over again? The thought of his witty, clever daughter dicing with the clockwork soldiers and slicing the throats of witches felt like staring over the edge of a rooftop, a sickening certainty that gravity would pull him over.

She was not the type. Emily had always preferred to hide. Whether down on the shore of the Wrenhaven river, avoiding Callista’s lessons, or sitting quietly at the head of the dinner table while liquor and fine food loosened the tongues of her rivals, Emily was more the waiting cat than the hunting hound. Emily was not the type, but then . . . some said that about him.

“Corvo?”

He brushed his fingertips over the heart.

_“You will never know if Emily is truly yours.”_

Anton retreated a step or so. Perhaps because Corvo’s sword was in one hand, and his other clutched the heart of a living thing.

_“You are alone now. I am your only family.”_

“Do you think that if you shed enough blood this time, no one will endanger your family again?” Anton sounded tired. “You should know better, Corvo.”

Corvo sheathed his sword and glanced at the old man. It would be easy enough to add him to the bloody river too, he had served some role in the loss of both Empresses, had he not?

As if following his thoughts, Anton shook his head slowly. “Billie lost her leader, her lover, and her purpose too, you know.”

“I think you ought to leave Dunwall,” Corvo murmured, and in a few short strides, climbed into the skiff. Over fifteen years ago, he had approached Dunwall Tower on a tug, Curnow by his side, so eager to see Jessamine and Emily once more that his heart might have burst. The memory now was nothing more than a story he might have heard someone tell. He could not feel that joy ever again.

_“Anton thinks you are not the type to find joy in revenge. You are exactly the type.”_

Another lie from the dead one’s heart. Still, as the skiff crossed the waves, he cradled it to him. A lie might be all he had left of the Empress.


End file.
